Feeling Safe in Japan

I was warned, but didn’t need to be. ‘Don’t even think about taking out your phone when you’re outdoors in London’.  I was very aware of that warning on a recent visit- but even so, it’s easy to forget it.  Hundreds of phones are snatched every day.  The exact numbers aren’t known, as few of the thefts are reported to the police.  What’s the point, when the police don’t give a damn and the chances of them recovering your phone, let alone catching the culprits are tiny.  The thefts are usually carried out in the open air by thieves wearing balaclavas on scooters and they are gone in the flash of an eye.  But many thefts are carried out by pickpockets on the street or in shops and cafes.  This plague ruins many a holiday and deters people from visiting or living in London, me included.

The contrast with Japan couldn’t be more stark.  There, people feel so certain that their phone will never be stolen that they will leave it on a table to reserve a seat in a café and then go to the counter to order, confident that their place and the phone will be there when they return.  The photo above was taken in a Starbucks in Fukuoka, where a woman marched in, put her phone on the table and then disappeared to get her order.  The next day I saw a woman leave her handbag on a table and then go round the corner, out of site, to join the queue for a coffee.  These people aren’t stupid or reckless- they know with certainty that their property is not at any risk of being stolen.
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In London the number of phone thefts has quadrupled in the last four years and the culprits are organised gangs.  In a recent case, involving 40,000 stolen phones, where the police did make arrests, the thieves were from Bulgaria, the organisers were from Afghanistan and the phones were being shipped to China. This kind of scenario could never occur in Japan, where they keep very strict control of their borders and they have maintained their society as a homogeneous, harmonious whole.  The consequences of Britain failing to do so is only too apparent.